Question: Does the International Genocide Treaty prohibit preaching the gospel?

Question: Does the International Genocide Treaty prohibit preaching the gospel? Could someone be prosecuted under it for saying that homosexuality or Islam are condemned in the Bible?

Response: This Treaty was adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the UN General Assembly, 12/9/48, and went into force 1/12/51. It made a law of the declaration by the General Assembly in Res. 96, 12/11/46, making genocide a crime.

You ask, “Could someone be prosecuted under it for saying that homosexuality or Islam are condemned in the Bible?” In a word, yes, because the definition is broad enough to include almost anything. So far, however, this has not been done. The only prosecutions involved Rwanda and Yugoslavia.

Under the treaty, genocide includes any defined action “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group through causing serious...mental harm to members of the group [emphasis added].”

Although this provision has not been brought into play against preachers of the gospel who give the whole counsel of God, it could be any time the UN decides to do so. Whatever persecution and prosecution may come in the future, let us be faithful now—and also when the time comes.